"I ask you again, which would you have rather lost, your grandfather"s inheritance or your right leg?"
"Most certainly my inheritance,"
"Or your left arm?"
"Still the inheritance."
"Would you have received the inheritance on condition that your front teeth should be knocked out?"
"No."
"Would you have given up a year of your life for that fortune trebled?"
"Even at twenty-three I would have refused the terms."
"Come, come, Coningsby, the calamity cannot be very great."
"Why, you have put it in an ingenious point of view; and yet it is not so easy to convince a man, that he should be content who has lost everything."
"You have a great many things at this moment that you separately prefer to the fortune that you have forfeited. How then can you be said to have lost everything?"
"What have I?" said Coningsby, despondingly.
"You have health, youth, good looks, great abilities, considerable knowledge, a fine courage, a lofty spirit, and no contemptible experience. With each of these qualities one might make a fortune; the combination ought to command the highest."
"You console me," said Coningsby, with a faint blush and a fainter smile.
"I teach you the truth. That is always solacing. I think you are a most fortunate young man; I should not have thought you more fortunate if you had been your grandfather"s heir; perhaps less so. But I wish you to comprehend your position: if you understand it you will cease to lament."
"But what should I do?"
"Bring your intelligence to bear on the right object. I make you no offers of fortune, because I know you would not accept them, and indeed I have no wish to see you a lounger in life. If you had inherited a great patrimony, it is possible your natural character and previous culture might have saved you from its paralysing influence; but it is a question, even with you. Now you are free; that is to say, you are free, if you are not in debt. A man who has not seen the world, whose fancy is hara.s.sed with glittering images of pleasures he has never experienced, cannot live on 300_l._ per annum; but you can. You have nothing to haunt your thoughts, or disturb the abstraction of your studies. You have seen the most beautiful women; you have banqueted in palaces; you know what heroes, and wits, and statesmen are made of: and you can draw on your memory instead of your imagination for all those dazzling and interesting objects that make the inexperienced restless, and are the cause of what are called sc.r.a.pes. But you can do nothing if you be in debt. You must be free. Before, therefore, we proceed, I must beg you to be frank on this head. If you have any absolute or contingent inc.u.mbrances, tell me of them without reserve, and permit me to clear them at once to any amount. You will sensibly oblige me in so doing: because I am interested in watching your career, and if the racer start with a clog my psychological observations will be imperfect."
"You are, indeed, a friend; and had I debts I would ask you to pay them. I have nothing of the kind. My grandfather was so lavish in his allowance to me that I never got into difficulties. Besides, there are horses and things without end which I must sell, and money at Drummonds"."
"That will produce your outfit, whatever the course you adopt. I conceive there are two careers which deserve your consideration. In the first place there is Diplomacy. If you decide upon that, I can a.s.sist you. There exist between me and the Minister such relations that I can at once secure you that first step which is so difficult to obtain.
After that, much, if not all, depends on yourself. But I could advance you, provided you were capable. You should, at least, not languish for want of preferment. In an important post, I could throw in your way advantages which would soon permit you to control cabinets. Information commands the world. I doubt not your success, and for such a career, speedy. Let us a.s.sume it as a fact. Is it a result satisfactory? Suppose yourself in a dozen years a Plenipotentiary at a chief court, or at a critical post, with a red ribbon and the Privy Council in immediate perspective; and, after a lengthened career, a pension and a peerage.
Would that satisfy you? You don"t look excited. I am hardly surprised.
In your position it would not satisfy me. A Diplomatist is, after all, a phantom. There is a want of nationality about his being. I always look upon Diplomatists as the Hebrews of politics; without country, political creeds, popular convictions, that strong reality of existence which pervades the career of an eminent citizen in a free and great country."
"You read my thoughts," said Coningsby. "I should be sorry to sever myself from England."
"There remains then the other, the greater, the n.o.bler career," said Sidonia, "which in England may give you all, the Bar. I am absolutely persuaded that with the requisite qualifications, and with perseverance, success at the Bar is certain. It may be r.e.t.a.r.ded or precipitated by circ.u.mstances, but cannot be ultimately affected. You have a right to count with your friends on no lack of opportunities when you are ripe for them. You appear to me to have all the qualities necessary for the Bar; and you may count on that perseverance which is indispensable, for the reason I have before mentioned, because it will be sustained by your experience."
"I have resolved," said Coningsby; "I will try for the Great Seal."
CHAPTER IV.
Alone in his chambers, no longer under the sustaining influence of Sidonia"s converse and counsel, the shades of night descending and bearing gloom to the gloomy, all the excitement of his spirit evaporated, the heart of Coningsby sank. All now depended on himself, and in that self he had no trust. Why should he succeed? Success was the most rare of results. Thousands fail; units triumph. And even success could only be conducted to him by the course of many years. His career, even if prosperous, was now to commence by the greatest sacrifice which the heart of man could be called upon to sustain. Upon the stern altar of his fortunes he must immolate his first and enduring love. Before, he had a perilous position to offer Edith; now he had none. The future might then have aided them; there was no combination which could improve his present. Under any circ.u.mstances he must, after all his thoughts and studies, commence a new novitiate, and before he could enter the arena must pa.s.s years of silent and obscure preparation. "Twas very bitter.
He looked up, his eye caught that drawing of the towers of h.e.l.lingsley which she had given him in the days of their happy hearts. That was all that was to remain of their loves. He was to bear it to the future scene of his labours, to remind him through revolving years of toil and routine, that he too had had his romance, had roamed in fair gardens, and whispered in willing ears the secrets of his pa.s.sion. That drawing was to become the altar-piece of his life.
Coningsby pa.s.sed an agitated night of broken sleep, waking often with a consciousness of having experienced some great misfortune, yet with an indefinite conception of its nature. He woke exhausted and dispirited.
It was a gloomy day, a raw north-easter blowing up the cloisters of the Albany, in which the fog was lingering, the newspaper on his breakfast-table, full of rumoured particulars of his grandfather"s will, which had of course been duly digested by all who knew him. What a contrast to St. Genevieve! To the bright, bracing morn of that merry Christmas! That radiant and cheerful scene, and those gracious and beaming personages, seemed another world and order of beings to the one he now inhabited, and the people with whom he must now commune. The Great Seal indeed! It was the wild excitement of despair, the frenzied hope that blends inevitably with absolute ruin, that could alone have inspired such a hallucination! His unstrung heart deserted him. His energies could rally no more. He gave orders that he was at home to no one; and in his morning gown and slippers, with his feet resting on the fireplace, the once high-souled and n.o.ble-hearted Coningsby delivered himself up to despair.
The day pa.s.sed in a dark trance rather than a reverie. Nothing rose to his consciousness. He was like a particle of chaos; at the best, a glimmering ent.i.ty of some shadowy Hades. Towards evening the wind changed, the fog dispersed, there came a clear starry night, brisk and bright. Coningsby roused himself, dressed, and wrapping his cloak around him, sallied forth. Once more in the mighty streets, surrounded by millions, his petty griefs and personal fortunes a.s.sumed their proper position. Well had Sidonia taught him, view everything in its relation to the rest. "Tis the secret of all wisdom. Here was the mightiest of modern cities; the rival even of the most celebrated of the ancient.
Whether he inherited or forfeited fortunes, what was it to the pa.s.sing throng? They would not share his splendour, or his luxury, or his comfort. But a word from his lip, a thought from his brain, expressed at the right time, at the right place, might turn their hearts, might influence their pa.s.sions, might change their opinions, might affect their destiny. Nothing is great but the personal. As civilisation advances, the accidents of life become each day less important.
The power of man, his greatness and his glory, depend on essential qualities. Brains every day become more precious than blood. You must give men new ideas, you must teach them new words, you must modify their manners, you must change their laws, you must root out prejudices, subvert convictions, if you wish to be great. Greatness no longer depends on rentals, the world is too rich; nor on pedigrees, the world is too knowing.
"The greatness of this city destroys my misery," said Coningsby, "and my genius shall conquer its greatness."
This conviction of power in the midst of despair was a revelation of intrinsic strength. It is indeed the test of a creative spirit. From that moment all petty fears for an ordinary future quitted him. He felt that he must be prepared for great sacrifices, for infinite suffering; that there must devolve on him a bitter inheritance of obscurity, struggle, envy, and hatred, vulgar prejudice, base criticism, petty hostilities, but the dawn would break, and the hour arrive, when the welcome morning hymn of his success and his fame would sound and be re-echoed.
He returned to his rooms; calm, resolute. He slept the deep sleep of a man void of anxiety, that has neither hope nor fear to haunt his visions, but is prepared to rise on the morrow collected for the great human struggle.
And the morning came. Fresh, vigorous, not rash or precipitate, yet determined to lose no time in idle meditation, Coningsby already resolved at once to quit his present residence, was projecting a visit to some legal quarter, where he intended in future to reside, when his servant brought him a note. The handwriting was feminine. The note was from Flora. The contents were brief. She begged Mr. Coningsby, with great earnestness, to do her the honour and the kindness of calling on her at his earliest convenience, at the hotel in Brook Street where she now resided.
It was an interview which Coningsby would rather have avoided; yet it seemed to him, after a moment"s reflection, neither just, nor kind, nor manly, to refuse her request. Flora had not injured him. She was, after all, his kin. Was it for a moment to be supposed that he was envious of her lot? He replied, therefore, that in an hour he would wait upon her.
In an hour, then, two individuals are to be brought together whose first meeting was held under circ.u.mstances most strangely different. Then Coningsby was the patron, a generous and spontaneous one, of a being obscure, almost friendless, and sinking under bitter mortification.
His favour could not be the less appreciated because he was the chosen relative of a powerful n.o.ble. That n.o.ble was no more; his vast inheritance had devolved on the disregarded, even despised actress, whose suffering emotions Coningsby had then soothed, and whose fortune had risen on the destruction of all his prospects, and the balk of all his aspirations.
Flora was alone when Coningsby was ushered into the room. The extreme delicacy of her appearance was increased by her deep mourning; and seated in a cushioned chair, from which she seemed to rise with an effort, she certainly presented little of the character of a fortunate and prosperous heiress.
"You are very good to come to me," she said, faintly smiling.
Coningsby extended his hand to her affectionately, in which she placed her own, looking down much embarra.s.sed.
"You have an agreeable situation here," said Coningsby, trying to break the first awkwardness of their meeting.
"Yes; but I hope not to stop here long?"
"You are going abroad?"
"No; I hope never to leave England!"
There was a slight pause; and then Flora sighed and said,
"I wish to speak to you on a subject that gives me pain; yet of which I must speak. You think I have injured you?"
"I am sure," said Coningsby, in a tone of great kindness, "that you could injure no one."
"I have robbed you of your inheritance."
"It was not mine by any right, legal or moral. There were others who might have urged an equal claim to it; and there are many who will now think that you might have preferred a superior one."